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Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Interdictor Battle Reports

I've managed to get in a couple of games with the fleet I built to test out the Interdictor in the last post. I've enjoyed playing it so much that I'm figuring on running it at an upcoming tournament. Read on for a couple of battle reports and some thoughts on how the Interdictor worked.

In the first game I came up against another Interdictor fleet. This one featured Admiral Konstantine, G8 Projectors, a couple of Tractor Beams, and some VSDs. It looked like my opponent intended to use the ability to slow me down so that he could munch me with those VSDs. I chose to go second and my opponent picked Advanced Gunnery after considering what I could do with the Grav Shift Reroutes. Vader smiled at this and prepared to deal with Admiral Konstantine's lack of faith.

We more or less deployed opposite each other and I was able to use the Grav Shifts to place some obstacles into his path. It had been a long time since I played Imperials, so fly right at the other guy seemed like a fine strategy to start with.

As we moved up he kept his compliment of Agressor squadrons safely behind his ships. I kept my squadrons near my Raider for cover as well.

Thanks to being second player I was able to stay out of black die range of his VSDs and force him to come at me. I was also able to use a well timed squadron command from the ISD to pin his Agressors with my TIEs.

With help from Advanced Gunnery was able to kill off one VSD with a little help from the Interdictor.

The other VSD got off a double-arc counter attack on the ISD, which had been taking a pounding. The combination of Targeting Scramblers and Projection Experts made sure the ISD stayed in good health. The ISD and Interdictor were then able to gang up on and kill his Interdictor.The Raider didn't do much this game aside from providing an extra activation, while my squadrons were able to chew through his. I used a couple of squadron commands from the ISD to get the most out of the TIEs. This worked out as the Repair commands ont he Interdictor kept the ISD rolling strong.

The second game was the next week, but against the same opponent. This time he had a 2x VSD, 2x Gozanti fleet built around a huge Rhymerball.

He
opted to try Contested Outpost in this case.I set 3 of the obstacles
near each other in the middle as well as the station and dropped the
Grav Reroute token in the middle of them. I was able to really shift the obstacles in my favor, moving the station close to my deployment area and placing the asteroids to block his path to the station.

I felt really good about the deployment and new he wouldn't be challenging me for the objective points for at least a couple of turns.

I made a mistake setting my dials and had Repair and Navigate in the wrong order for my ISD. This cost me a shield and led to me deciding to not slow to speed 1 on the second turn like I should have.

This led to the ISD being swarmed by bombers on 3 sides. I did my best to tie up his squadrons, but with 2 Intel ships at his disposal, it was tough to do. I also got my ISD far enough out in front, that my Interdictor hit it from behind. Where did I learn to fly exactly?

The Rhymerball was doing some solid damage to the ISD. The Interdictor was trying to help, but could only do so much. The 2 Gozantis ended up dieing rather quickly. One from a front blast from the ISD, that go the requisite scatter (Yay Vader!). The other died with full shields after suffering 3 rams. This was good as the Bomber Command Centers had been taking their toll.The Raider did whiff its APT shot on the VSD even with Vader's encouragement. In choosing to ram the Gozanti with my Raider, I left it in front of the VSD. My hope was that the Targeting Scrambler could save it. It almost worked. He got the 1 accuracy that he needed on the 3 red dice to shut down the Raider's brace and the re-roll from the Scrambler left him just enough damage to kill the Raider.

My squadrons were doing a steady job of chewing up the Rhymerball and keeping it tied down. I let one slip away and it was just the shot needed to kill off the ISD.

The Interdictor tried to finish one of the VSDs, but just didn't have enough firepower to do it by itself. I had 2 chances with TIE squadrons on the last turn, but came up short.We didn't add up the score, but it was close. He had his 2x VSDs left, but I had killed all but one squadron of the Rhymerball and claimed 4 tokens to 2.A few thoughts on my fleet:

I need more practice with Imperials. I am really good at avoiding arcs with my Rebels, but kept getting that ISD ganged up on in these games. It hits hard with Vader, but I need to do a better job of having the ISD and Interdictor attacking together.

Vader is great! The re-rolls gave me significant extra damage and worked well for all 3 ships.

The Grav Shift Reroute is really fun. Messing with obstacles after deployment opens up some strong possibilities.

Targeting Scramblers were also really effective. I think you can expect to see a lot of that card.

The Ion Cannon Batteries worked as well as I had hoped with the Interdictor. With Vader's help I had a crit nearly every time I shot the Interdictors blue dice. Even without Vader's help, i rolled enough crits to make them worthwhile. I think the Interdictor will be viable as an Ion platform.

I may tweak my squadron compliment a bit. I'm not sure Mithel and Howlrunner are totally necessary.

I'd like to get the Interdictor title in there as it could have allowed me additional uses of the Targeting Scrambler.

With double-arcs, the Interdictors firepower is pretty good. It still isn't likely to kill much by itself though.

My long-range firepower is pretty poor. I think a TRC fleet would tear this fleet apart.

On the other hand, it can dominate its objectives pretty well.

What kind of adjustments should I make before the tournament this weekend?

Great reports! And thank you for inspiring me to try the Interdictor in a serious way!

I was wondering though, to what extent do you think Vader delivered more than Screed would have? Was the extra 10 points plus cost of tokens really better than the guaranteed crit which would have, for example, given you your APT?

I've found Vader to give better results for me as he works on both attacks a ship can make and I don't lose a dice. Screed is really better when black dice are involved, but with reds and blues I prefer Vader.

Great report, as usual!I usually try and have a "projection force" (i.e. a Rhymerball that can bring forward some dice before the space-triangles kick in); I lately tried and implement a Gozanti-led Rhymerball, followed by either an Interdictor or by a swarm of GSD but..... I am not too sure about the goodness of Gozanti. I expected them to be game-changing but they are just too fragile.....And I am not even mentioning their use with Slicer tools!